Braids generally comprise many filaments interwoven together to form a cylindrical or otherwise tubular structure. Such braids have a wide array of medical applications. For example, braids can be designed to collapse into small catheters for deployment in minimally invasive surgical procedures. Once deployed from a catheter, some braids can expand within the vessel or other bodily lumen in which they are deployed to, for example, occlude or slow the flow of bodily fluids, to trap or filter particles within a bodily fluid, or to retrieve blood clots or other foreign objects in the body.
Some known machines for forming braids operate by moving spools of wire such that the wires paid out from individual spools cross over/under one another. However, these braiding machines are not suitable for most medical applications that require braids constructed of very fine wires that have a low tensile strength. In particular, as the wires are paid out from the spools they can be subject to large impulse forces that may break the wires. Other known braiding machines secure a weight to each wire to tension the wires without subjecting them to large impulse forces during the braiding process. These machines then manipulate the wires using hooks other means for gripping the wires to braid the wires over/under each other. One drawback with such braiding machines is that they tend to be very slow. Moreover, since braids have many applications, the specifications of their design—such as their length, diameter, pore size, etc., can vary greatly. Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a braiding machine capable of forming braids with varying dimensions, using very thin filaments, and at higher speeds that hook-type over/under braiders.